Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

by Viv Albertine

  Difficult as she is, and different as the band are as people, there are core beliefs that we all share and I’m amazed and excited that we’ve found each other. One of the many things we all agree on is, we hate double standards and false people and all of us are very vocal in our damnation of any hapless person who crosses our path who hasn’t thought rigorously about life.

  When we were on a TV show in Holland, Mike Oldfield’s sister, Sally, was on the same bill. She had a single out at the time (‘Mirrors’). Sally was dressed in a peasant gypsy-type dress and warbling away in a breathy little-girl voice. We went up to her afterwards and told her she was shit, that she was compounding stereotypes and doing a disservice to girls, that she should take a good look at what she was doing and how she was projecting herself and be honest about who she was. She burst into tears. We do that sort of thing all the time.

  Living in England means Ari has a lot of freedom; her father isn’t around, all her family are in Europe and Nora has a free parenting style. Although Ari has to be in bed by about ten thirty, Nora’s happy for her to hang out with us – even to miss school sometimes to do shows (it helps that her new school is Holland Park Comprehensive, it’s very lax). Ari gets on with us older musicians much better than with the kids at her school, they just don’t compare. She doesn’t even want to try and fit in with her peer group, she’s found something more interesting – so there’s no one in England she gives a shit about impressing or disappointing and no real authority figure to rein her in. This translates into her performances: she has no self-consciousness and there’s an unpredictable edge to her. I watch her performing with great respect, almost awe.

  Ari crosses so many boundaries and is so innovative, with her voice, in her moves – you’ve never seen a girl move how she moves – she hasn’t watched many bands, all her dancing and vocal performance is down to her imagination and her own inventiveness. She reminds me of Kaspar Hauser: like him, she’s Bavarian, been closeted away and then let loose on the world.

  Ari hides nothing from our audiences: if she’s in a bad mood, she shows it, and if we happen to be on stage when she’s not happy, she just does a shit gig. There’s no You’ve paid money to see this so I’m going to give you a good time, or I’m not going to let the band down – she’s just grumpy and uncommunicative. This is a good thing in many ways, we’re against faking it, we tell it like it is. People in bands are just like the audience: they have good days and bad days, we’re not pantomime or theatre, we’re no different to anyone else. We don’t see ourselves as entertainers, trying to make the audience forget their troubles for forty minutes. We see ourselves as warriors. We’d rather people confronted their anger and dissatisfaction and did something about it. Like Luis Buñuel said, ‘I’m not here to entertain you, I’m here to make you feel uncomfortable.’

  Ari’s greatest strength is that she’s a talented and committed musician. She plays classical piano and reads music and brings those melodies and rhythms into the Slits. Her musicality is the only thing she has over the rest of us and boy does she use it. Who wouldn’t at fifteen years old? Everyone’s older than you, everyone’s done everything before you, the one advantage you have is that you can play an instrument and read music, and they can’t. Ari pulls us apart musically, haranguing me, Palmolive and Tessa, constantly telling us we’re out of tune and out of time. It’s become almost crippling. She makes us feel stupid, which is no doubt how we make her feel the rest of the time.

  Ari would like to play bass and drums as well as sing in the band if only she had extra arms, so she does the next best thing and helps compose the bass lines and drum rhythms too. (Luckily for me she’s not very interested in the guitar so I’m left to my own devices.)

  There’s another trait that adds to Ari’s liberation: she doesn’t care about being attractive to boys. She’s not bothered about looking pretty or moving seductively for them, she only does that for her own pleasure. She doesn’t see her body as a vehicle for attracting a mate, and she doesn’t squash bits of her personality to avoid overshadowing boys. I realise I’m learning a lot from her, and it would be foolish of me to dismiss her because she’s young. Since knowing Ari, I’ve become more aware of how uptight I am about my body, bodily functions, smells and nudity. Ari moves her body with the unselfconsciousness of a child, and I don’t see any reason why I can’t reclaim that feeling, even though I’m older. I’m constantly questioning stereotyping through my work but I’m still enslaved by the stereotype of femininity in my mind. (‘It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head’ – Sally Kempton.) Ari has no such hang-ups. When we played the Music Machine in Mornington Crescent, halfway through the set she was dying for a piss, she didn’t want to leave the stage and couldn’t bear to be uncomfortable, so she just pulled down her leggings and knickers and pissed on the stage – all over the next band’s guitarist’s pedals as it happened – I was so impressed. No girl had pissed on stage before, but Ari didn’t do it to be a rebel or to shock, it was much more subversive than that: she just needed a piss. In these times when girls are so uptight and secretive about their bodies and desperately trying to be ‘feminine’, she is a revolutionary.

  The Slits get a lot of shit on the streets but even though being in the group is uncomfortable for all of us in different ways, we’d fight to the death for each other. We feel as if we haven’t chosen the band, it’s chosen us – that’s the funny thing about bands, sometimes the chemistry works because it’s not all cosy, it’s more critical and outspoken, like family. Life’s more frightening when I’m travelling around London without the rest of them. Like when I was getting eyeballed by a gang of skinhead girls on the tube, I thought to myself, I may have to fight for my life here, if they follow me off the train and attack me (and no one would intervene with me dressed like this) … I’ll have to do what Sid told me, smash one of them over the head with my belt buckle. The prospect of being attacked is terrifying. It’s a very real threat. Chrissie Hynde was attacked by a gang of skinhead girls and stabbed with a stiletto heel.

  Ari is the one of us who gets the most hatred channelled through her, she’s been stabbed twice, once when we all left a rehearsal studio in Dalston. It was getting dark, the studio was in a very isolated, industrial area, this guy dressed in a leopard-print shirt (we found out later he was known as Leopard Boy) ran up to us and stuck a knife in Ari: luckily it didn’t go very deep. Palmolive went mad at him and he ran off. Another time we were walking along Islington High Street, on our way to see the film The Harder They Come for the fifth time at the Screen on the Green cinema, and we heard a voice behind us say, ‘Take that, Slit.’ We turned round and saw this guy running away, there was blood on Ari’s clothes; she’d been stabbed in the arse. Being attacked, spat at, sworn at and laughed at is part of all our lives, but I think Ari’s especially brave. Being so young, she is more vulnerable but she never hides away, or adapts her clothes and behaviour to protect herself. They’ll never beat Ari into submission.

  When her period started a couple of months ago, there was no shouting and fuss. She was excited to be a woman, not horrified and disgusted like I was. Now, whenever she has a period, she talks about it and shows us the blood. Nora tells her not to use sanitary towels (says they have some dangerous absorbent chemicals in them) or tampons, because they cause cancer – I’ve never heard that before, but I suppose if you think about it, all that blood pooling up near your cervix can’t be too good for you – so Ari stuffs her knickers with huge hanks of cotton wool, fat white tufts stick out either side of the gusset. When the cotton wool is saturated with blood, she pulls it out and holds it up for everyone to see, then wraps it in paper and puts it in the bin, replacing it with a new clump. All this whilst she’s wearing the shortest mini skirt in the world and you can practically see her knickers. In fact I’m sure people get glimpses of the cotton wool sticking out as she jumps and twirls around the room. I’d rather risk cancer than ever have a boy know I was having my period, let
alone actually see the workings of it. You can smell it too.

  Anyway, thanks to Ari, I’m becoming more and more relaxed about bodily functions, and sometimes for a laugh I wear a tampon – dipped in reddish-brown paint, so it looks like stale blood – looped over my ear like an earring. Once, I was wearing it at the bus stop in Elgin Avenue when I noticed a middle-aged Jamaican woman staring at me. I took no notice, straight people are always staring at me. I was wearing a pale blue tutu, with opaque baby-blue dance tights, Dr Marten boots, a shrunken cashmere leopard-print jumper, my bleached hair matted and backcombed and loads of black kohl around my eyes. I’d forgotten about the tampon dangling from my left ear.

  The woman started to edge towards me hesitantly. I looked away. She sidled right up next to me. I was just about to step away from her when she said, ‘Excuse me, dear.’

  Her kind tone took me by surprise so I turned back towards her. She had a strange expression on her face. Horror, embarrassment, nervousness; I couldn’t quite work it out.

  She leaned close to me, I bent down so she could reach my ear.

  ‘Excuse me, dear,’ she said again, ‘I’m so sorry … I don’t know what to … how to say … I don’t know how …’

  What’s she on about?

  She stepped back and looked pleadingly into my eyes, like she was hoping I would pick up what she was trying to say telepathically, but I just stared back at her blankly, so she took a deep breath and blurted out:

  ‘You’ve got a … it’s in your hair … must have got caught there when you were, you know … dressing.’ She waved her arms in the air above her head to demonstrate pulling on a jumper. ‘I’m so sorry … I didn’t know if I should … or what to … I had to tell you … so sorry …’

  Oh phew, she had me worried for a moment. The 31 bus pulled up and I jumped up onto the platform, calling out to her, ‘I know! It’s meant to be there!’ I smiled and waved as the bus trundled off.

  As Ari grows up in front of me, I start to notice something unsettling happening: she’s always watching me. Always. She doesn’t take her eyes off me. This goes on for over a year. It’s terrible. I can’t walk across a room, dance to a record, get something out of my bag, talk to a boy, flirt or have a conversation, without her drinking it in. I’m still learning, I’m shy and reinventing myself in front of all these people, my head is full of new thoughts and it’s not like I know how to dance – especially to reggae – or talk to a guy, and yet I’m being scrutinised by an unsmiling Ari whilst I do all these things. Dancing is especially agonising with her unblinking blue eyes boring into me until she’s absorbed my moves, and I know full well that she thinks most of them are rubbish; it’s not like she’s looking at me thinking I’m completely wonderful. She’s an amazing mimic, learning a new language, different accents, attitudes and moves, all in such a short time-frame. I can see her mentally sifting the bits she will use from the bits she’ll dismiss. She’s building herself like a machine.

  My mum’s noticed the way Ari is fixated on me and when she came backstage after a gig recently, she took me aside and said, ‘Viv, it’s like Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in All About Eve. Try and stay away from her as much as possible, she’s stealing your soul.’ I know what she means. It’s chilling. I feel like I’m going mad. She mimics and copies me relentlessly and it doesn’t seem fl attering or admiring, it feels cold and vampiric.

  When we do an interview and I give my opinion on something, Ari repeats what I’ve just said word for word, straight after I’ve said it, same intonation and everything. Not like she’s reaffirming what I’ve said, but like she’s just thought of it. And it’s amazing when you speak with that kind of conviction, how many people, even journalists, are taken in. When the articles come out, the opinions are attributed to Ari. Maybe it makes a better story if these thoughts come from a fifteen-year-old rather than a twenty-two-year-old. It’s like Gaslight, that Ingrid Bergman film; after a while you don’t know if you’re insane or they are. I begin to lose my marbles and start thinking, Well, I’m not going to speak in interviews if she’s going to repeat what I say, let’s see how she does if I don’t say anything. But I can’t keep that up for long; when I disagree with something she says, I pipe up again.

  Having my words stolen and all my actions scrutinised makes me want to escape from the band as much as possible. I think of leaving so many times, but I don’t because I believe we’re greater than the sum of our parts. What we create together and what we put across is more important than the painful day-to-day reality of being together.

  Ari’s unhealthy attention comes to an end when Rastas and reggae take over from me as fascinations for her to study. It’s a bittersweet release. At last I’m not under her microscope, but at the same time I’m dismissed. She has more equal relationships now, with people her own age; the same happened to me with my sister. There comes a time when they relish not needing you any more and move on triumphantly, almost disdainfully. It was painful when my sister did it. I really missed her. It’s the lot of an elder sister, you get the good and the bad of being first. I’m still glad I’m the eldest though, I like blazing the way.

  Another odd thing is that if any bloke looks at Ari in a sexual way, I think he’s a pervert. I want to kill him. It’s not just because she’s young and I see her as still a child, but it seems a bit sick to me. She’s an innocent, an enfant sauvage, and I think they’re taking advantage of her. Maybe I’m just being possessive and territorial. Ari’s not interested in sex, although she wears her clothes provocatively – to her it’s playful: knickers over trousers, short skirts (tufts of cotton wool on view) with boyish Chelsea boots.

  She’s dressed like this, in a tiny skirt, sparkly tights and an oversized lurex drape jacket, when, in an attempt to bond, I agree to go along to a reggae night at the 100 Club with her. When Ari listens to reggae on a cassette player, she rocks backwards and forwards manically, sometimes for five or six hours on end. It calms her down, especially on long journeys to gigs. She’s obsessive about the bass lines, the drum patterns, the lyrics (I could almost hate reggae for the way she’s taken it and made it her own, as if she invented it).

  At the 100 Club, Ari takes over the dancefloor, displaying her extraordinary dance style, which is cobbled together and customised from watching young boys at sound systems we go to, like Sir Coxsone and Jah Shaka, or late-night clubs in Dalston, Phoebe’s and the Four Aces. We’re often the only girls at these all-nighters, and the fact that we are white and dressed so strangely is even more extraordinary, but no one gives us any trouble or is antagonistic towards us. Ari never watches the girls dance, they’re too discreet and understated, just shifting from one foot to the other – she watches the athletic boys and copies what they do. She’s amalgamated their moves and now has an amazing praying mantis dance style, reminiscent of White Crane kung fu. She bobs up and down on one bent leg, using her arms and hands as claws, or feelers – it’s very beautiful, sometimes funny, almost mime, telling little stories to the music. People clear a space round her and she gets lost in the rhythm.

  Ari dancing, 1980

  When the 100 Club closes, we all spill out onto the pavement, but Ari doesn’t want to go home, she’s still buzzing from dancing all evening. She starts chatting to two older guys and asks them if there’s anything else going on. At first they say no but then they remember there’s a party in Peckham. They tell us to wait whilst they go and get their car. I really don’t want to go to a party but I don’t want to seem a bore so I go along with it.

  The guys pull up and we climb in the back. By the time we’re on the Mall, heading towards Buckingham Palace, I’m dreading the thought of spending a couple of hours, maybe all night, at a house party in Peckham and, knowing I’m being a drag, I confess to Ari that I don’t want to go. She tries to persuade me but I’ve made up my mind. I tell her she shouldn’t go either; it’s too far away and she doesn’t know these guys – I say she’ll just have to let it go and come home with me. But she r
efuses, she loves the idea of meeting new people and she loves dancing, she can happily dance all night.

  I give up trying to persuade Ari and ask the guys to stop the car and let me out. As I say it, I get a tiny little twinge in my chest and realise I’m worried they won’t stop. They haven’t given me any reason to be suspicious, but I’m relieved when the driver slows down and pulls over. I scoot out quickly and lean into the back seat to have one more try at persuading Ari to come with me. She’s adamant she’s going to the party, they drive off. I’m so relieved that I’m out of the car and not going to Peckham. I walk back up to Trafalgar Square and get the night bus home.

  About six months later, when Ari and I are alone, she tells me what happened after I left her that night. They drove to Peckham and pulled up in front of a big old house. Ari and one of the guys went inside, the other guy went to park the car. When they got inside Ari saw that the house was empty, abandoned, derelict. The guy grabbed her and raped her. He was so violent she begged him not to cut her face. After a few hours he left, saying if she told anyone about it, he’d find her and kill her. This was her first sexual experience. She said she was embarrassed to tell me at the time because she’d been such a fool, said she should have listened to me. It broke my heart in so many ways. She didn’t let this experience define her though. After a while she healed and went on to enjoy a normal, healthy sex life and then I knew for sure that she was a stronger person than me. I also realised I was right to trust my instincts. No matter how silly you feel or uncool you look, no matter how small that voice inside you is, that voice telling you something isn’t right: listen to it.

  46 WHITE RIOT

  1977

  We are not afraid of ruins.

  Buenaventura Durruti

  Mick and I are back together again and in a week’s time the Slits are going on the White Riot tour with the Clash. I’ve got to learn all our songs, I can’t even play guitar standing up yet. We haven’t played a gig together either, so we go down to the Pindar of Wakefield pub in Islington to see if we can have a quick go on their stage. When we arrive we see that a bunch of boys are churning out some old rock music, we’ve got our guitars with us but we hold them behind our backs so no one suspects anything. In between songs I go up to the guitarist in the rock band and ask him if we can play a song. He says no, so I pull him off stage and Ari, Tessa and Palmolive pull the other guys off, there’s an uproar, a couple of cymbals get kicked over but Palmolive doesn’t care, she doesn’t use them anyway. We bash through ‘Let’s Do the Split’ before the manager and barmen pull us off. That’s our warm-up gig done.